Australian Scrum Community

Many thanks to the SyXPAC crew for inviting us to their geek night. Everyone made us feel welcome. I certainly enjoyed the discussion and meeting some people who I only knew by name.

As I understand it, last night was the inauguaral SyXPAC “Open Space in a pub” event. It worked really well. We had four discussion topics to choose from for each half hour timeslot, and plenty of people to keep the conversation flowing.

People who were interested in leading a discussion wrote a topic on an index card (a ThoughtWorks index card, no less) and stuck it on a wall in their half hour timeslot of choice. Once the wall was full there was some mildly chaotic rearranging to optimise who could attend which discussion, then the groups formed in various corners of the The Grand’s pool room. Scribes took notes on butchers paper. Ben facilitated and took digital photos of it all.

There was lots of passionate discussion from people coming at the topics from different angles. Subjects covered the agile spectrum, from the permathreads to the provocative, but mostly in between. Of course, since we Scrum people were invited there was the mandatory Scrum vs XP topic.

Unfortunately I had to leave well before the atmosbeer evaporated. That left Richard holding the Scrum flag in the Scrum vs XP discussion, in a largely pro-XP crowd. I’m sure he did very well, and I apologise for deserting. Hopefully he can blog about how that discussion went and what he thought of the night.

So, thanks again SyXPAC. Hope we can do it again some time.